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Saloni
@scientificdiscovery.dev
35K followers 1.1K following 3.7K posts
Co-founder & editor, Works in Progress. Writer, Scientific Discovery. Podcaster, Hard Drugs. Advisor, Open Philanthropy. // Previously at Our World in Data.

Newsletter: https://scientificdiscovery.dev
Podcast: https://harddrugs.worksinprogress.co

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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · Jun 11
LAUNCH DAY 🚀

Today I’m launching a new podcast, Hard Drugs, with Jacob Trefethen (@jacobtref.bsky.social)

Our first episode is about lenacapavir — a new HIV drug that blocks infections with an efficacy rate of nearly 100%, and which could completely change the fight against HIV worldwide.
Lenacapavir: The miracle drug that could end AIDS
Hard Drugs · Episode
open.spotify.com
scientificdiscovery.dev
Aside from other reasons to add alt text, they also help search for images.

If your search terms are in the alt text, but not the main text, the post still comes up in the results on Bluesky.
November 10, 2025 at 11:07 PM
Reposted by Saloni
helenbranswell.bsky.social
As expected, Canada has lost its measles-free status because of the long-running outbreak there. With it goes the #measles elimination status of the entire zone of the Americas, the only division of the #WHO to ever have achieved measles elimination. www.statnews.com/2025/11/10/m...
Canada loses measles elimination status — as does the entire Americas region
Canada has formally lost its measles elimination status, the country’s public health agency announced, triggering the loss of that status throughout all of the Americas.
www.statnews.com
November 10, 2025 at 2:49 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
Wow, I just saw a meteor!
November 10, 2025 at 10:26 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
It is strange sometimes that some apps do barely any personalised advertising.

The food delivery apps I've used for many years still don't seem to know I'm vegetarian, and I often have to scroll through a whole page "for the carnivores" before I get to stuff I might like.
November 9, 2025 at 6:20 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
This seems like a highly unfortunate misspelling of funeral.
The Doll's Funreal by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
November 8, 2025 at 11:18 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
It's surprising how long it took for people to accept the theory of continental drift, considering:
Ireland with a koala outline drawn over it
November 8, 2025 at 3:12 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
Write for us!

Here are 26 ideas of articles we'd like to commission.
www.worksinprogress.news/p/more-artic...
Drugs that last for months. A new generation of long-acting drugs like lenacapavir points to a different approach to prevention: take one dose, stay protected for half a year (and possibly more). What are the different ways scientists are designing medicines that last so long in the body, and what trade-offs come with durability? Crafting a universal flu vaccine. Each year, scientists study the strains circulating in the population, predict which will dominate, and reformulate the vaccine to match. When those predictions miss, protection drops, and updating the formulation takes time. Could we create a single vaccine that protects against all forms of influenza? The mosquito we should just get rid of. One mosquito species is responsible for most cases of dengue, Zika, yellow fever, and chikungunya: Aedes aegypti. It thrives in cities, breeding in bottle caps and flower pots, and has adapted perfectly to human life. But now scientists have tools, like gene drives and Wolbachia bacteria, to suppress or even eliminate it. What makes this one mosquito species so harmful to us? How might we eliminate it? Successful pension reforms in recent history. Australia successfully moved its population to a retirement savings plan (‘Superannuation’) in the early 1990s. Silvio Berlusconi’s governments in Italy drove reforms that moved much of the population from ‘defined benefit’ pensions to savings-focused ‘defined contribution’ pensions. What can other states learn from these experiences to reduce their own future retirees’ dependence on working age populations? Heathrow’s surprising efficiency. Europe’s busiest airport desperately needs more physical infrastructure, especially runways. But it is remarkable how well it has done with just the two runways that it has. What has it done to engineer around this constraint? Everyday progress in cosmetic technology. Plastic surgery was once a byword for wealth but many interventions are now commonplace. The frontier seems to be pushing out as well: consider the latest Kardashian facelift or the improvement of hair systems. We want to read a piece on the lack of stagnation in appearance-enhancement, either a case study on a specific procedure or an article on the field overall. Blockers to AI automation. We recently ran a piece on why AI hasn’t replaced radiologists. What are similar stories in other fields? The type of piece we will consider is a detailed case study of capability that already (plausibly) exists, but that has been less impactful than people hoped. We’re not that interested in speculation based on abilities that models may have in the future. Inversely, if there are areas which haven’t been covered well elsewhere where models have been surprisingly effective at displacing humans, feel free to pitch us as well. The land that lived with malaria for millennia. For thousands of years, malaria haunted the Italian peninsula, from the Pontine marshes near Rome to its southern coasts. Then, within a few decades in the mid-20th century, it was eliminated. How did a disease so deeply rooted in Italy’s history disappear so quickly, and what does the story tell us about public health and environmental change? Why does Asia have higher density than Africa? Across MENA, South Asia, and South-East Asia, many cities are made up mostly of mid-rise apartment buildings, often clustered together at densities equal to or greater than those of nineteenth century Europe. In Sub-Saharan Africa, by contrast, urban densities tend to be low, with single-story buildings making up most of the urban area. This pattern holds even in cases of African countries with higher incomes than many Asian countries (e.g. Botswana, South Africa, Gabon, Rwanda). What is the cause of this? What does it teach us about the drivers of urban density?
November 8, 2025 at 3:06 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
Saw this in a book and I hope the author didn't have other children not listed here
For Christopher and Andrew My favourite sons
November 8, 2025 at 12:35 AM
scientificdiscovery.dev
Reading Rosalind Franklin's Wikipedia page when suddenly
Franklin was 11 when she went to St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, west London, one of the few girls' schools in London that taught physics and chemistry.[29][31][32] At St Paul's, she excelled in science, Latin,[33] and sports.[34] Franklin also learned German, and became fluent in French, a language she would later find useful. Franklin topped her classes, and won annual awards. Her only educational weakness was in music, for which the school music director, the composer Gustav Holst, once called upon her mother to enquire whether she might have suffered from hearing problems or tonsillitis.[35]
November 8, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Reposted by Saloni
jdportes.bsky.social
"There is simply no sign of a fiscal catastrophe from the 'Boriswave'. Recent migrants are very likely to be employed, paying tax and seem to be contributing to British society..it will help, rather than hurt, Britain’s fiscal position."

Analysis by @lgilbert.co

ukandeu.ac.uk/lower-migrat...
Lower migration is bad news for the UK economy - UK in a changing Europe
Lauren Gilbert argues that migrants to the UK are net fiscal contributors, adding much more to the economy than they take out, and that the recent collapse in immigration will harm the UK's economic p...
ukandeu.ac.uk
November 6, 2025 at 4:00 PM
Reposted by Saloni
cameronpat.bsky.social
happy 11th anniversary to this email sent to all staff at the School of Mathematics and Statistics
Dear All, I am delighted to report to you the first results of an experiment that is being conducted in the tea room of this Department. On 29 August, an Oslo Stainless Steel Cutlery Set (48 Pieces: 12 Knifes, 12 Forks, 12 Tea Spoons, 12 Dinner Spoons) was placed in a drawer in the Departmental tea room. A poster asking not to remove the cutlery from the tea room was attached in a visible location. The original research plan was to monitor (in real time) the disappearance of the cutlery from the tea room and then fit a point/counting process model to the observed data. However, as the research project failed to attract any major grants (and so hiring a research assistant to do the work was impossible), it was decided to conduct opportunistic discrete monitoring only. Here is the first result: sixty days in the experiment, the disappearance rates stand as follows: Knives: 8.3% Forks: 100% Tea spoons: 58.3% Dinner spoons: 41.7% Possible conclusions include, but are not limited to, the following: the people who removed the missing cutlery don’t understand written English; they don’t see forks as a special case of cutlery; forks are needed to do some kind of mathematics; the knives from the set are no good; small spoons are slightly more attractive than the large ones; things left in our tea room tend to disappear even if they are not edible; further research is needed to fully understand the phenomenon. Best, kostya borovkov
November 4, 2025 at 2:16 AM
scientificdiscovery.dev
I really like the feeling of waking up early and realising it's so early that I can go back and sleep some more.

Makes me think I should go to bed earlier so I can feel that even more 😂
November 4, 2025 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by Saloni
scientificdiscovery.dev
The print edition of Works in Progress is now available in:

• Canada 🇨🇦
• Australia 🇦🇺
• the European Union 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇩🇪

Subscribe today for 6 beautiful issues a year. The first edition ships in 2 weeks! 🥳
worksinprogress.co/print/
Print - Works in Progress Magazine
worksinprogress.co
November 4, 2025 at 12:38 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
I've changed my mind about LinkedIn - it's good now.
Yegor Korovin Data Scientist at MindWalk 7h ago Recently I’ve listened to an amazing episode of Hard Drugs podcast (https://lnkd.in/dnMZUudf by Saloni Dattani and Jacob Trefethen) on HIV drugs. From there I learned that the virus keeps its RNA and associated proteins in a viral capsid. HIV capsid transports virus’ deadly weapons to the host’s cell’s nucleus, where via a devilish mechanism RNA gets reverse-transcribed into DNA, which in turn integrates into human genome. These capsids are variable in shape and size, but ALL of them have exactly 12 pentagons! This reminds me of a beautiful mathematical result explaining where this magical number 12 comes from. Here is a short article I wrote to describe this connection between abstract Mathematics and HIV:
November 4, 2025 at 1:49 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
The print edition of Works in Progress is now available in:

• Canada 🇨🇦
• Australia 🇦🇺
• the European Union 🇪🇺 🇮🇪 🇩🇪

Subscribe today for 6 beautiful issues a year. The first edition ships in 2 weeks! 🥳
worksinprogress.co/print/
Print - Works in Progress Magazine
worksinprogress.co
November 4, 2025 at 12:38 PM
Reposted by Saloni
40percentgerman.bsky.social
"A good way to learn German is to read children's books to familiarise yourself with basic grammar and vocabulary"

German children's book:
December 10, 2024 at 6:58 AM
Reposted by Saloni
dingdingpeng.the100.ci
Slowly listening my way through this episode, which is great overall, except there is a major error in it which I think requires a correction as well as reconsideration of their fact checking process:
scientificdiscovery.dev Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 12d
This year Demis Hassabis predicted AI could cure all disease in a decade.

But other scientists like Claus Wilke & Derek Lowe say biology is far more complex, or progress will be limited by clinical trials & economics.

In a new 4hr podcast episode of *Hard Drugs*, we answer: Will AI solve medicine?
Will AI solve medicine?
spotify.link
November 3, 2025 at 5:33 AM
scientificdiscovery.dev
I'm not lazy, I'm just convenience maxxing.
November 2, 2025 at 12:59 PM
scientificdiscovery.dev
Almost fell for a scam call today, and realised that if I simply never picked up the phone, I'd easily avoid loads of potential scammers
Meme of soldier protecting child from weapons, but it's phone anxiety protecting zoomers from endless scam calls
November 1, 2025 at 6:05 PM
Reposted by Saloni
boghuma.bsky.social
Really cool study: a fully recombinant antivenom made not from horse serum but from nanobodies i.e. tiny, single-chain antibodies derived from alpacas and llamas. These molecules are smaller, more stable, cheaper to produce, and less likely to trigger immune reactions.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Nanobody-based recombinant antivenom for cobra, mamba and rinkhals bites - Nature
A recombinant antivenom composed of eight nanobodies provides broad protection against venom-induced lethality and dermonecrosis in mice challenged with venoms from cobras, mambas and rinkha...
www.nature.com
October 31, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Reposted by Saloni
solidevidence.bsky.social
Can you take a quarter cup of composite sewage, simply ask ‘what’s in there?’, and find out all of the pathogens circulating in that community?

That is the question we asked in our latest pre-print.

Turns out you can.
1/
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
Untargeted longitudinal ultra deep metagenomic sequencing of wastewater provides a comprehensive readout of expected and unexpected viral pathogens
Wastewater surveillance has become a powerful tool to monitor circulating viruses at a community level. Currently, most wastewater surveillance efforts use target-based approaches such as quantitative...
www.medrxiv.org
October 31, 2025 at 12:19 PM
Reposted by Saloni
annemscheel.bsky.social
There still seems to be a lot of confusion about significance testing in psych. No, p-values *don’t* become useless at large N. This flawed point also used to be framed as "too much power". But power isn't the problem – it's 1) unbalanced error rates and 2) the (lack of a) SESOI. 1/ >
aaronjfisher.bsky.social Aaron Fisher @aaronjfisher.bsky.social · 11d
But here's, the thing, p values and significance become useless at such large sample sizes. When you're dividing the coefficient by the SE and the sample size is in the tens of thousands, EVERYTHING IS SIGNIFICANT. All you're testing is whether the coefficient is different than zero.
October 31, 2025 at 8:13 AM
scientificdiscovery.dev
🤦‍♀️
Robert Koch, who came on to the scientific scene in the 1870s, used his great authority to criticize the use of carbolic acid on the grounds that it failed to destroy anthrax spores. Although such criticism was scarcely relevant to an operating surgeon, Lister switched to the even more toxic mercuric chloride.
October 31, 2025 at 8:03 AM
Reposted by Saloni
poli.sisti.ca
>In a new 4hr episode of the Hard Drugs podcast,

The sudden appearance of this podcast is going to ruin my schedule in the best possible way
scientificdiscovery.dev Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 12d
This year Demis Hassabis predicted AI could cure all disease in a decade.

But other scientists like Claus Wilke & Derek Lowe say biology is far more complex, or progress will be limited by clinical trials & economics.

In a new 4hr podcast episode of *Hard Drugs*, we answer: Will AI solve medicine?
Will AI solve medicine?
spotify.link
October 30, 2025 at 1:17 AM
scientificdiscovery.dev
A youtube comment by 'inquisition3000': Real question is "will i finish this podcast by 2035"
October 29, 2025 at 8:48 PM